Sir Gordon Robson, who has died aged 85, was a former director and professor of anaesthetics at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and Hammersmith Hospital. He advanced the science and practice of anaesthetics, made a substantial contribution to medicine and the NHS over more than 50 years and did much on the national scene to improve standards of patient care.

Born in Stirling, where he attended high school, he did his medical training in Glasgow. His father was a chemist with British Coal and his mother was Dutch; her father taught languages in Dundee. The family were not well off, and Gordon's medical studies were only possible through the support of his uncle Percy. His acute mind was brilliantly organised to deal with complex issues. He had a very strong sense of good and less good medical practice and although always courteous, was fearless in pointing out substandard practice to professional colleagues. In his younger days he was a good motor mechanic, a cricketer and a keen sailor.

After qualifying in 1944 and six months obstetrics in Stirling, when he was abruptly thrown into the realities of home deliveries in poor households where expensive medical help was often sought too late, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. His interest in anaesthetics had been kindled by the deficiencies then apparent in obstetric and dental anaesthesia. As a captain he became a trainee anaesthetist to East Africa Command in Nairobi. His skills were quickly appreciated by the Army surgeons.

On being demobilised in 1948, he worked in Glasgow, Newcastle and Edinburgh. He was then offered the Wellcome research chair of anaesthetics at McGill University, Montreal, where in his eight years he carried out research on the actions of anaesthetic drugs on the brain and the control of respiration. He and his wife were astonished by the lack of postwar austerity as compared with Britain, and enjoyed the wonderful fishing. While there, he also helped plan and equip a revolutionary new cylindrical building for the McIntyre medical centre - designed much ahead of its time for energy conservation. It still thrives 40 years on.

In 1964, Robson returned to the UK to become the first professor and chairman of the department of anaesthetics at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and Hammersmith Hospital. Supported by the professor of surgery RB Wellbourn, he insisted on separating the anaesthetic department from that of surgery, and put the anaesthetist firmly in charge of the patient's medical management during surgery. He fought hard for his research funds, and during his 22-year tenure the standing of the department and its research had the highest acclaim.

He took an active part in the faculty of anaesthetists, then within the Royal College of Surgeons, and was later its dean. He was also dean of the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the RCS and first master of its Hunterian Institute. He introduced the inspection of anaesthetics departments for training purposes - having the temerity to remove trainees from a number of well-known departments in London where insufficient supervision was taking place, often because senior staff were working on another site.

In 1979 he carried out fundamental work on the definition of brain death, so important in transplant surgery. The criteria he developed are still used today and he was much incensed by what he regarded as serious misrepresentation of this in a BBC Panorama programme.

In 1984 he was appointed chairman of the advisory committee on distinction awards. He ran this system of pay increments for consultants who take on responsibilities over and above their NHS duties with scrupulous fairness and care for nine years - the longest since Lord Moran, who started the scheme at Aneurin Bevan's instigation in 1948.

Robson received many honorary degrees and fellowships, and taught globally. He had been vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, a life vice-president of the RNLI, and was also on the committee of the AA. He was appointed CBE in 1977 and knighted in 1982.

His first wife, Dr Martha Kennedy, who had a career in medical practice and its administration, moving workplace with him, died in 1975. He is survived by his second wife, Jenny Kilpatrick, whom he married in 1984.

· James Gordon Robson, anaesthetist and medical leader, born March 18 1921; died February 23 2007